Before you buy a ticket on a warp drive craft

Once again we discover that faster than light travel is a little less impossible than thought. Except that the devil is in the details. Wikipedia has a more detailed history and description. You can skip the math, it doesn't help much unless you're ready to delve into families of initial conditions and solutions. I'm not.

The short answer is that all you need is some unobtainium (to give the negative energy density), which is possibly tachyonic (try and catch me!), built into worse than microscopically thin rings, and precisely calibrated so that tidal forces don't tear your spaceship apart. And I'm not quite clear what happens when you run into space dust along the way--it might mess up your careful tidal balance. And the pilot has a little trouble steering.

But hey: this time you don't need > mass of the universe energy available, or even mass of Jupiter energy; all you need is the energy of a bunch of H-bombs. So it is now "a little less impossible."

Resisting the temptation to connect the attitude with magical thinking by ... Must resist ...

A pity. I'd love to see Sag-A'. Though even if the drive worked there'd not be cheap passenger fares in my lifetime.

Update: Maybe I should have made this shorter:

Before you buy a ticket on a warp drive craft

Be sure you won't hit dust clouds on the way

For when your unobtainium ring bends back aft

Tides will shred your life support away